Donnelly and Burchill reunited

Two former Celtic strikers were back in action at the weekend in a veteran’s match between Scotland and England in Dubai.

During the nineties Simon Donnelly and Mark Burchill broke through the ranks to make the headlines with the passage of time being kind to both of them.

While some former players grow beer bellies and chins as soon as their playing days end Donnelly and Burchill look almost as lean as when they made their Celtic debuts.

Donnelly made his debut under Lou Macari and played through the eventful Fergus McCann years before moving on to Sheffield Wednesday after teaming up with Henrik Larsson to stop the ten.

Towards the end of Donnelly’s Celtic days Burchill burst into the first team making a similar impact as the next bright young thing.

Competing with Mark Viduka, Larsson, Tommy Johnson and Chris Sutton proved a bit steep for the striker from Livingston but he did create his own piece of Celtic history with a four minute hat-trick against Jeunesse Esch in August 2000.